Woman accepts she made errors in rape account allegations

Sarah-Jane Murphy
– 17 January 2018 02:30 AM

Central Criminal Court

A woman who alleges she was raped by two men following a concert by US singer Jason Derulo says she was telling the truth about the offences but that her conflicting accounts were due to "false memories".

The defendants, aged 35 and 44, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, deny the offences, alleged to have occurred in a hired tour bus in Cork city on June 27, 2014.

The 35-year-old has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to rape, oral rape, sexual assault and false imprisonment of the woman, then 19.

The 44-year-old denied anal rape and false imprisonment.

Mr Derulo is not charged with any offence in relation to these events.

Yesterday, Kerida Naidoo, defending, led the woman through the differing accounts she gave to a garda, a nurse and her first official garda statements. All three individuals recorded written notes of their conversation.

The accounts differed as regards to the type of rape and whether both men had allegedly raped her simultaneously or one after the other. The woman accepted she said things that "simply didn't happen" shortly after the alleged incident

"I hadn't had any sleep, maybe my mind was confused," she said, and agreed with Mr Naidoo that these were "false memories".

The complainant gave her first statement to gardai on June 27 and a second statement 10 days later, on July 7.

When asked by Mr Naidoo why she changed details of her story, she said it took her this amount of time to come around to what had happened.

"I stayed in bed for the whole 10 days, and I had my supportive family," she said.

Mr Naidoo put it to her that she realised that if her story was to hold up, she had to take certain details out.

The woman replied that she was tired, and had no sleep, food or drink when she gave her original statement to gardai.

Additions

Mr Naidoo asked if gardai had read her original statement to her at the time and asked if she wanted to make deletions or additions. The complainant said she could not remember making additions to her statement.

"Your account didn't include the detail of simultaneous vaginal and anal sex - the garda read it to you, you stopped her, and said you needed to add it," Mr Naidoo said.

She further agreed with Mr Naidoo when he said that confusion and tiredness cannot be used to explain details that she now acknowledges are untrue.